It’s happened again. The appalling massacre in Orlando has led to a mass media frenzy to demonise, stereotype and isolate some of the most vulnerable people in our society – the mentally ill.
We see it every time that a fanatical Islamist goes on a killing spree; rather than put the blame where it belongs – on liberal immigration policies, weak policing and the Wahhabi propaganda that breeds such hatreds – politicians and left-wing analysts fall over themselves to declare that the killer was ‘mentally ill’. The broadcast media promptly fills up with armchair psychiatrists declaring that he was “mentally unstable”, “probably mentally unwell” or “showing signs of mental ill health”.
Obviously, this rush to call a killer mentally ill is partly intended to shift the blame from where it really lies, but in some cases it probably also comes from a sort of wonky well-meaning: people assume that in order to commit a massacre or a particularly sadistic murder, the perpetrator would have to be in a state of mind so utterly different to any normal person that they may as well qualify as unwell. A sick act, surely, demands a sick mind.
Now, such stereotyping may help some Muslims and liberals to avoid having to think about the problems embedded in aspects of their faith or policies, but how do you think it impacts on the totally blameless victims of genuine mental illness?
Isn’t it bad enough that these innocent people are struggling with terrible, life-altering, even potentially life-ending sickness, without the added burden of the stigmatisation of their health problem as being the alleged cause of a seemingly endless series of brutal mass murders, both overseas and in their own countries?
It is perhaps not surprising that many liberals are desperate to avoid having to have a grown up discussion about the incompatibility of Wahhabism – thanks to Gulf oil money now the increasingly dominant form of Islam in many parts of the world, including ours – and Western society. But it is surprising, and it is also unacceptable, that these apologists for Islamism feel it is acceptable to pile the extra burden of unnecessary prejudice and unjustified guilt on the mentally ill.
This is not a minor issue. With one in four people in Britain suffering some sort of mental illness every year, the number of victims of this thoughtless Political Correct judgmental cruelty is far higher than the number of Muslims who might be distressed by an honest policy of laying the blame where it actually belongs – on Wahhabi Islam and on the corrupt Western politicians and journalists who allow Saudi Arabia and Qatar to get away with spreading its cancer of hate because, let us be blunt, these medievalist dictatorships are stinking rich and pay very well.
How would it make YOU feel?
Imagine for a moment that you were suffering from some form of mental illness. How would you feel if, on top of all the anxiety, depression, confusion and alienation, you also had to bear the added burden of an irrational fear – reinforced every time you see the news – that massacres like those in Orlando, or random stabbings of teenage girls at bus stops, are carried out by people like you? Just how unfair is that?
This is particularly so for those with the more severe forms of mental illness who, by sad virtue of their sickness, are all the more vulnerable to illogical fears and worries about what they might do. Using figures from the charity MIND: the 3 – 5 in 100 people with personality disorders; the 17% suffering already from depression and anxiety; the same proportion who, at some point in their lives, have serious thoughts of suicide.
On their behalf, it is time to make this plea to the liberal apologists for the utter evil of Wahhabi sectarianism and bigotry: Stop trying to shift the blame by dumping it on the vulnerable mentally ill.
Yes, it may be that some of the killers under consideration do genuinely have mental issues of their own. It is all too possible that the high rate of drug use among the low-level ghetto criminals and former public schoolboys who often end up as Jihadi mass murderers is the ‘hidden’ factor in triggering the mental health problems which liberals then point to as the root of the problem.
But millions of people suffer from mental illnesses, and they don’t go donning suicide vests, picking up assault rifles or carving knives and declaring war on our entire society. The common denominator among the individuals who do such things is not mental illness; it is their adherence to Salafist, Wahhabi Islam.
The sooner this is understood, even by the globalist liberal elite who – not surprisingly – are clearly eaten up with unacknowledged guilt over the disaster their policies, from mass immigration and multi-culturalism to their meddling in the Middle East, the sooner the real problems can be tackled.
And the sooner the tortured, tragic victims of mental illness will be spared the grotesquely unfair burden of fearing that their friends and neighbours might view them as potential mass murderers; or the even more devastating worry that they may suddenly become mass murderers, because that’s the narrative repeated morning, noon and night on their televisions, by liberal who either do not know or do not care the unnecessary pain they are causing.
It is time for this injustice to stop! Some people chose to be Islamist killers, but no one chooses to be mentally ill!
